[MERGED] Bring back colored /me chat messages + Update the /me command to color chat messages FOR MODS/BROADCASTER ROLES ONLY
Or at least give streamers the authority to enable or disable it. But the ENTIRE point was how it stood out with color. Plain black with italics just renders it useless.

Hey all,
Thank you for the patience with us on this. This has been one of the most popular ideas on UserVoice and we definitely heard your feedback.
Today we launched /announcement for mods and streamers. Announcements can be used in chat to highlight a message and are available in 4 different colors along with the channel accent color. Because this is only part of the ask of this idea we are setting this idea to partial release so the community can continue to leave feedback on this.
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MrFluffyNL commented
This is only 5% of the issue "solved". Viewers want it back too. I like this new feature, but it's like I just said, a new feature, not a 'fix' for something that wasn't broken. The whole reason why coloured /me was removed in the first place, was just in my opinion, unreasonable. Streamers would get confused and think they'd have a fake donation? Come on. You have a bot that will tell you. Not some random person. You have activity feed. Not a random person. I enjoyed it when someone was typing in /me while I was live. And a lot of friends and fellow streamers with me. Just bring the old /me back and if you really need to, make it a toggle where they streamer/mods can decide if it's going to be coloured or italic. Problem solved
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Merovingien commented
i would like Twitch bring the normal behavior of the /me (get the color from the user, remove the italic)
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Sarioah commented
Literally just a toggle on coloured /me, make it opt-in if it's an "issue", that's all we're asking......
/announce is neat for sure, but it doesn't apply for all use cases where /me was useful (and it's modonly anyway)
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Badiiin commented
/announce is a cool idea for occasional use, although it would be better if the message could be pined/unpined by the moderator on the top of the chat instead of a scrolling message.
It still doesn't replace the /me function which was to either highlight or just tell apart a bot message than the viewer message. Even when you guys enable /announce to be used by bots this will became really messy visually on chat if streamers use them as the old /me was used, to just tell apart a bot message from regular viewers.
My suggestion is to just create a way to streamer mark a user to be a bot instead of mod (using /bot on the user) them all the chat messages from the bot user will became on a color of choice of the streamer.
The bot user could even have a different badge although having all the same rights as the mods (maybe making them imune from timeout/ban, but this is a stretch of the idea)
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Wanderpus commented
Please just give us the /me color text back with an on/off toggle, that's all you had to do. Not only do the "announcement" colors get pretty lost in the chat anyway, they don't seem to work with bots or Streamdeck text commands, rendering them pretty useless even if they could be seen well.
Were fake donations that didn't make a sound or alert really that huge of a problem that the color text feature had to be taken away from everyone?
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IamFutureMan commented
Well for a moment there I thought "wow Twitch has actually (finally) listened to it's people?" then I read the full "announcement"... This sort of half hearted response when the actual solution is clear is why I left Twitch almost a year ago. Honestly seeing this just reinforces that leaving was the right call after all.
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Colonel_Frosty commented
I love how this was done on April 1st because it's obviously a joke...
When raiding someone and spamming your raid messages it was nice to add some color to it but now it's just blah and boring.
If I remember correctly the reason why this was removed is because people were using the command to do fake donations. I had this done to me and I never was fooled by it either because it takes an actual donation to make a sound go off. <---------So once again twitch misses the point and this is further proved by being done on April 1st.
Thanks for nothing.
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Duffwuff commented
Love how this is not at all what we asked for. Just bring back the colored text with an option to disable it within a user's account settings. Or, better idea, add color blindness options as well. That way every user can decide individually for themselves if they want colored messages or italics.
Honestly, that's what you should have done in the first place. More choice in customizing the UI/UX is always better. That's why not one, but TWO browser extensions have been created just to make your site a more pleasant (see also: bearable) experience.
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Unknown_ commented
Here's what removing /me did:
Push streamers, that used /me for the colours, to tell their viewers to use third party chat clients or browser plug-ins.That's really all that has happend.
This "announce" took so incredibly long to be implemented (nearly a year), and here we are.. still using /me with colours. Just not visible to new people on the site.
The best possible solution would've been: A on & off toggle for the old /me command. Boom, solved it for those that didn't like /me command and allowed /me for those that enjoy it. Easy. From there you can look into everyone/mod-only settings.
A quick side-note: /announce doesn't show up at all in third party chat clients. Literally making the message that's being send invisible. Just a heads up on how "visible" you really made these important announcements. :)
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AviiNL commented
This doesn't seem to be implemented in the existing IRC protocol, sending `/announce something` from a bot doesn't seem to do anything, nor can I find an outgoing packet in the websockets from the browser.
How can we (developers) let bots utilize this functionality?
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AMuller commented
Why bringing this back for broadcaster/mods only?
A LOT of communities had great fun utilizing /me colored messages for everyone and it's been the top requested feature to be brought back.PLEASE just let the broadcaster decide on how they want to do it, it can't be too hard to add it as a channel setting. Currently people use FFZ to override this anyway....
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orobou commented
/announcement increases the size of messages because of the header; for bots that uses multiple messages (like mini chatgames and such) it's just going to create a big cluster spam that will make the chat unreadable. The feature itself is nice for single occasional messages for sure, but is also a misdirection from the original request.
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Ashdemai commented
What is the problem with big companies not being able to listen to legitimate feedback? You took down something people liked, and now you "solved" the issue by not re-implementing it, and doing something else. Just to put a check mark on it. This isn't a partial release, this is a poor choice and a slap in the face to your customers.
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65bella commented
@dowski you guys did not listen to the community completely we wanted the /me that colored the chat text back and give the streamer the choice if they want chatters to be able color their text or not
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tcmich31 commented
/announcement should also allow you to Pin the comment for a duration of the stream, just my two cents.
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TheMitchingHour commented
This new announcement feature is not the solution any of us asked for. Why is this so difficult?
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EffenBlue commented
Wait, why did you combine the two? Some of us wanted /me back the way it was. /announcement is something totally different.
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Phat32 commented
I was excited when I read this, but in testing I am a little disappointed. This does add a nice little effect that you can see in chat but if you use an IRC chat client it doesn't show the message that was posted at all and instead a blank line.
I agree it should be an option left to the streamer to adjust, it can be disabled by default to help address the edge cases of people getting duped
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JonnyOThan commented
/announcement doesn’t address my use-case: interaction with commands to bots. My stream is based around using /me to give commands to bots, and ever since the styling change its very hard to distinguish bot commands from regular chat.
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SeashellWizard commented
... is it really THAT difficult to make it into a setting? Let the streamer choose if they want to enable the colour for the chat or not.
We're all happy. End of story.